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    The science and art of complex systems

    As a high school student, Gosha Geogdzhayev attended Saturday science classes at Columbia University, including one called The Physics of Climate Change. “They showed us a satellite image of the Earth’s atmosphere, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is so beautiful,’” he recalls. Since then, climate science has been one of his driving interests.

    With the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the BC3 Climate Grand Challenges project, Geogdzhayev is creating climate model “emulators” in order to localize the large-scale data provided by global climate models (GCMs). As he explains, GCMs can make broad predictions about climate change, but they are not proficient at analyzing impacts in localized areas. However, simpler “emulator” models can learn from GCMs and other data sources to answer specialized questions. The model Geogdzhayev is currently working on will project the frequency of extreme heat events in Nigeria.

    A senior majoring in physics, Geogdzhayev hopes that his current and future research will help reshape the scientific approach to studying climate trends. More accurate predictions of climate conditions could have benefits far beyond scientific analysis, and affect the decisions of policymakers, businesspeople, and truly anyone concerned about climate change.

    “I have this fascination with complex systems, and reducing that complexity and picking it apart,” Geogdzhayev says.

    His pursuit of discovery has led him from Berlin, Germany, to Princeton, New Jersey, with stops in between. He has worked with Transsolar KlimaEngineering, NASA, NOAA, FU Berlin, and MIT, including through the MIT Climate Stability Consortium’s Climate Scholars Program, in research positions that explore climate science in different ways. His projects have involved applications such as severe weather alerts, predictions of late seasonal freezes, and eco-friendly building design. 

    The written word

    Originating even earlier than his passion for climate science is Geogdzhayev’s love of writing. He recently discovered original poetry dating back all the way to middle school. In this poetry he found a coincidental throughline to his current life: “There was one poem about climate, actually. It was so bad,” he says, laughing. “But it was cool to see.”

    As a scientist, Geogdzhayev finds that poetry helps quiet his often busy mind. Writing provides a vehicle to understand himself, and therefore to communicate more effectively with others, which he sees as necessary for success in his field.

    “A lot of good work comes from being able to communicate with other people. And poetry is a way for me to flex those muscles. If I can communicate with myself, and if I can communicate myself to others, that is transferable to science,” he says.

    Since last spring Geogdzhayev has attended poetry workshop classes at Harvard University, which he enjoys partly because it nudges him to explore spaces outside of MIT.

    He has contributed prolifically to platforms on campus as well. Since his first year, he has written as a staff blogger for MIT Admissions, creating posts about his life at MIT for prospective students. He has also written for the yearly fashion publication “Infinite Magazine.”

    Merging both science and writing, a peer-reviewed publication by Geogdzhayev will soon be published in the journal “Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena.” The piece explores the validity of climate statistics under climate change through an abstract mathematical system.

    Leading with heart

    Geogdzhayev enjoys being a collaborator, but also excels in leadership positions. When he first arrived at MIT, his dorm, Burton Conner, was closed for renovation, and he could not access that living community directly. Once his sophomore year arrived however, he was quick to volunteer to streamline the process to get new students involved, and eventually became floor chair for his living community, Burton 1.

    Following the social stagnation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the dorm renovation, he helped rebuild a sense of community for his dorm by planning social events and governmental organization for the floor. He now regards the members of Burton 1 as his closest friends and partners in “general tomfoolery.”

    This sense of leadership is coupled with an affinity for teaching. Geogdzhayev is a peer mentor in the Physics Mentorship Program and taught climate modeling classes to local high school students as a part of SPLASH. He describes these experiences as “very fun” and can imagine himself as a university professor dedicated to both teaching and research.

    Following graduation, Geogdzhayev intends to pursue a PhD in climate science or applied math. “I can see myself working on research for the rest of my life,” he says. More

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    AI meets climate: MIT Energy and Climate Hack 2023

    The MIT Energy and Climate Hack brought together participants from myriad fields and disciplines to develop rapid, innovative solutions to one of the most complex challenges facing society today: the global energy and climate crisis. Hundreds of students from MIT and colleges across the globe convened on MIT’s campus and virtually for this year’s event, which was held Nov. 10-12.

    Established in 2013, the MIT Energy and Climate Hack has been the launchpad for innovative and sustainable solutions for a decade; an annual reminder that exciting new ideas are always just around the corner.

    According to Claire Lorenzo, an MIT student organizer and communications director for this year’s Energy and Climate Hack, “There were a lot of people from a lot of places who showed up; both virtually and in person. It was encouraging to see how driven everyone was. How passionate they were about finding great solutions. You could see these ideas starting to form immediately.”

    On the first day, representatives from companies across numerous industries presented participants with their most pressing energy and climate-related challenges. Once the gathering broke into teams, participants had two days to “hack the challenge” they were assigned and present their solution to company representatives, fellow hackers, and judges.  

    The focus areas at this year’s event were energy markets, transportation, and farms and forests. Participating corporate sponsors included Google, Crusoe, Ironwood, Foothill Ventures, Koidra, Mitra Chem, Avangrid, Schneider Electric, First Solar, and Climate Ledger. 

    This year’s event also marked the first time that artificial intelligence emerged as a viable tool for developing creative climate solutions. Lorenzo observed, “I’m studying computer science, so exploring how AI could be harnessed to have a positive impact on the climate was particularly exciting for me. It can be applicable to virtually any domain. Like transportation, [with emissions] for example. In agriculture, too.”

    Energy and Climate Hack organizers identified the implementation of four core AI applications for special consideration: the acceleration of discovery (shortening the development process while simultaneously producing less waste), optimizing real-world solutions (utilizing automation to increase efficiency), prediction (using AI to improve prediction algorithms), and processing unstructured data (using AI to analyze and scale large amounts of data efficiently).

    “If there was a shared sentiment among the participants, it would probably be the idea that there isn’t a singular solution to climate change,” says Lorenzo, “and that requires cooperation from various industries, leveraging knowledge and experience from numerous fields, to make a lasting impact.”

    After the initial round of presentations concluded, one team from each challenge advanced from the preliminary presentation judging session to the final presentation round, where they pitched their solutions to a crowded room of attendees. Once the semi-finalists had pitched their solutions, the judges deliberated over the entries and selected team Fenergy, which worked in the energy markets sector, as the winners. The team, consisting of Alessandro Fumi, Amal Nammouchi, Amaury De Bock, Cyrine Chaabani, and Robbie Lee V, said, “Our solution, Unbiased Cathode, enables researchers to assess the supply chain implications of battery materials before development begins, hence reducing the lab-to-production timeline.”

    “They created a LLM [large language model]-powered tool that allows innovative new battery technologies to be iterated and developed much more efficiently,” Lorenzo added.

    When asked what she will remember most about her first experience at the MIT Energy and Climate Hack, Lorenzo replied, “Having hope for the future. Hope from seeing the passion that so many people have to find a solution. Hope from seeing all of these individuals come so far to tackle this challenge and make a difference. If we continue to develop and implement solutions like these on a global level, I am hopeful.”

    Students interested in learning more about the MIT Energy and Climate Hackathon, or participating in next year’s Hack, can find more information on the event website. More

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    MIT students win Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center sustainability award

    MIT senior Anna Kwon and sophomore Nicole Doering have been recognized by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) for their work as interns last summer. Both students received Jane Matlaw Environmental Champion Awards, which honor leaders and innovators who have catalyzed changes that align with BIDMC’s sustainability goals and foster a healthier future for staff and patients.

    The awards, which were established 25 years ago, had previously only been given to individuals and teams within BIDMC. “This year, given the significant leadership and alignment with our public commitments that Nicole and Anna had over the summer, our Sustainability Award Review Committee determined that we would include a student category of our awards for both a high school student and undergraduates as well,” says Avery Palardy, the climate and sustainability director at BIDMC.

    Kwon and Doering worked at BIDMC through the Social Impact Internship Program, one of many experiential learning opportunities offered by MIT’s Priscilla King Gray Center for Public Service. The program provides funded internships to students interested in working with government agencies, nonprofits, and social ventures.

    Both students conducted work that will help BIDMC meet two commitments to the Department of Health and Human Services Health Sector Climate Pledge: to develop a climate resilience plan for continuous operations by the end of 2023, and to conduct an inventory of its supply chain emissions by the end of 2024.

    “It was fun — a new challenge for me,” says Kwon, who is majoring in electrical engineering and computer science. “I have never done research in sustainability before. I was able to dive into the field of health care from a new angle, deepening my understanding of the complexities of environmental issues within health care.” Her internship involved performing data analysis related to carbon emissions. In addition, she developed actionable recommendations for conducting a comprehensive supply chain inventory.

    “Anna demonstrated unwavering diligence and attention to detail throughout her work to conduct a greenhouse gas inventory of our supply chain,” says Palardy. “She showcased exceptional skills in market research as she investigated best practices and emerging technologies to ensure that we stay at the forefront of sustainable practices. Her keen insights and forward-thinking approach have equipped us with valuable information for shaping our path forward on our sustainability goals.”

    Doering, a chemical engineering major, guided several departments in an internal assessment of best practices, vulnerabilities, and future directions to integrate climate resilience into the medical center’s operations. She has continued to work this fall to help finalize the climate resilience plan, and she has also been analyzing food procurement data to identify ways to reduce BIDMC’s Scope 3 emissions.

    Climate resilience isn’t an area of sustainability that Doering had considered before, but the internship experience has inspired her to continue pursuing other sustainability roles in the future. “I’m so thankful for all I’ve learned from BIDMC, so I’m really glad that my work was helpful to them. It is an honor that they trusted me to work with them on something that will have such a wonderful impact on our community,” she says.

    “The impact of Nicole’s contributions cannot be overstated,” notes Palardy. “From planning and organizing crucial focus groups to crafting our climate resilience plan, she played a pivotal role in shaping our climate resilience strategies for the better. I’m so grateful for the collaborative spirit, passion, and leadership that she brought to our team. She helped to drive innovation in health-care climate resilience that is necessary for us to ensure this continues to be a priority.” More

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    The power of knowledge

    In his early career at MIT, Josh Kuffour’s academic interests spanned mathematics, engineering, and physics. He decided to major in chemical engineering, figuring it would draw on all three areas. Then, he found himself increasingly interested in the mathematical components of his studies and added a second major, applied mathematics.

    Now, with a double major and energy studies minor, Kuffour is still seeking to learn even more. He has made it a goal to take classes from as many different departments as he can before he graduates. So far, he has taken classes from 17 different departments, ranging from Civil and Environmental Engineering to Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences to Linguistics and Philosophy.

    “It’s taught me about valuing different ways of thinking,” he says about this wide-ranging approach to the course catalog. “It’s also taught me to value blending disciplines as a whole. Learning about how other people think about the same problems from different perspectives allows for better solutions to be developed.”

    After graduation, Kuffour plans to pursue a master’s degree at MIT, either in the Technology and Policy Program or in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He intends to make renewable energy, and its role in addressing societal inequalities, the focus of his career after graduating, and eventually plans to become a teacher.

    Serving the public

    Recognizing the power of knowledge, Kuffour says he enjoys helping to educate others “in any way I can.” He is involved with several extracurriculars in which he can be a mentor for both peers and high school students.

    Kuffour has volunteered with the Educational Studies Program since his first semester at MIT. This club runs Splash, “a weekend-long learning extravaganza,” as Kuffour puts it, in which MIT students teach over 400 free classes on a huge variety of topics for local high school students.

    For his peers, Kuffour also participates in the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program (GEL). Here, he teaches first-year GEL students leadership skills that engineers may require in their future careers. In doing this, Kuffour says he develops his own leadership skills as well. He is also working as a teaching assistant for multivariable calculus this semester.

    Kuffour has also served as an advisor for the Concourse learning community; as president of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi; as a student representative on the HASS requirement subcommittee; and as a publicist for the Reason for God series, which invites the MIT community to discuss the intersections of religion with various facets of human life.

    Renewable energy

    Kuffour’s interest in energy issues has grown and evolved in recent years. He first learned about the ecological condition of the world in the eighth grade after watching the climate change documentary “Earth 2100” in school. Going into high school and college, Kuffour says he started reading books, taking classes, watching documentaries, participating in beach and city clean ups, to learn as much as possible about the environment and      global warming.

    During the summer of 2023, Kuffour worked as an energy and climate analysis intern for the consulting company Keylogic and has continued helping the company shift programming languages to Python for evaluating the economics of different methods of decarbonizing electricity sectors in the U.S. He has also assisted in analyzing trends in U.S. natural gas imports, exports, production, and consumption since the early 2000s.            

    In his time as an undergraduate, Kuffour’s interest in renewable energy has taken on a more justice-focused perspective. He’s learned over the course of his that due to historical inequalities in the U.S., pollution and other environmental problems have disproportionately impacted people of lower economic status and people of color. Since global warming will exacerbate these impacts, Kuffour seeks to address these growing inequalities through his work in energy data analysis.        

    Translating interests into activity

    Kuffour’s pursuit to expand his worldview never rests, even outside of the classroom. In his free time, he enjoys listening to podcasts or watching documentaries on any subject. When attempting to list all his favorite podcasts, he cuts himself off, saying, “This could go on for a while.”

    In 2022, Kuffour participated on a whim with a group of friends in an American Institute of Chemical Engineers competition, where he was tasked with creating a 1-by-1 foot cube that could filter water to specifications provided by the competition. He says it was fun to apply what he was learning at MIT to a project all the way in Arizona. 

    Kuffour enjoys discovering new things with friends as much as on his own. Three years ago, he started an intramural soccer team with friends from the Interphase EDGE program, which attracted many people he had never interacted with before. The team has been playing nearly every week since and Kuffour says the experience has been, “very enriching.”

    Kuffour hopes other students will also seek out knowledge and experiences from a wide range of sources during their undergraduate years. He offers: “Try as many things as possible even if you think you know what you want to do, and appreciate everything life has to offer.” More

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    How to decarbonize the world, at scale

    The world in recent years has largely been moving on from debates about the need to curb carbon emissions and focusing more on action — the development, implementation, and deployment of the technological, economic, and policy measures to spur the scale of reductions needed by mid-century. That was the message Robert Stoner, the interim director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), gave in his opening remarks at the 2023 MITEI Annual Research Conference.

    Attendees at the two-day conference included faculty members, researchers, industry and financial leaders, government officials, and students, as well as more than 50 online participants from around the world.

    “We are at an extraordinary inflection point. We have this narrow window in time to mitigate the worst effects of climate change by transforming our entire energy system and economy,” said Jonah Wagner, the chief strategist of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office, in one of the conference’s keynote speeches.

    Yet the solutions exist, he said. “Most of the technologies that we need to deploy to stay close to the international target of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming are proven and ready to go,” he said. “We have over 80 percent of the technologies we will need through 2030, and at least half of the technologies we will need through 2050.”

    For example, Wagner pointed to the newly commissioned advanced nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia — the first new nuclear reactor built in the United States in a generation, partly funded through DOE loans. “It will be the largest source of clean power in America,” he said. Though implementing all the needed technologies in the United States through mid-century will cost an estimated $10 trillion, or about $300 billion a year, most of that money will come from the private sector, he said.

    As the United States faces what he describes as “a tsunami of distributed energy production,” one key example of the strategy that’s needed going forward, he said, is encouraging the development of virtual power plants (VPPs). The U.S. power grid is growing, he said, and will add 200 gigawatts of peak demand by 2030. But rather than building new, large power plants to satisfy that need, much of the increase can be accommodated by VPPs, he said — which are “aggregations of distributed energy resources like rooftop solar with batteries, like electric vehicles (EVs) and chargers, like smart appliances, commercial and industrial loads on the grid that can be used together to help balance supply and demand just like a traditional power plant.” For example, by shifting the time of demand for some applications where the timing is not critical, such as recharging EVs late at night instead of right after getting home from work when demand may be peaking, the need for extra peak power can be alleviated.

    Such programs “offer a broad range of benefits,” including affordability, reliability and resilience, decarbonization, and emissions reductions. But implementing such systems on a wide scale requires some up-front help, he explained. Payment for consumers to enroll in programs that allow such time adjustments “is the majority of the cost” of establishing VPPs, he says, “and that means most of the money spent on VPPs goes back into the pockets of American consumers.” But to make that happen, there is a need for standardization of VPP operations “so that we are not recreating the wheel every single time we deploy a pilot or an effort with a utility.”

    The conference’s other keynote speaker, Anne White, the vice provost and associate vice president for research administration at MIT, cited devastating recent floods, wildfires, and many other extreme weather-related crises around the world that have been exacerbated by climate change. “We saw in myriad ways that energy concerns and climate concerns are one and the same,” she said. “So, we must urgently develop and scale low-carbon and zero-carbon solutions to prevent future warming. And we must do this with a practical, systems-based approach that considers efficiency, affordability, equity, and sustainability for how the world will meet its energy needs.”

    White added that at MIT, “we are mobilizing everything.” People at MIT feel a strong sense of responsibility for dealing with these global issues, she said, “and I think it’s because we believe we have tools that can really make a difference.”

    Among the specific promising technologies that have sprung from MIT’s labs, she pointed out, is the rapid development of fusion technology that led to MIT spinoff company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to build a demonstration unit of a practical fusion power reactor by the decade’s end. That’s an outcome of decades of research, she emphasized — the kinds of early-stage risky work that only academic labs, with help from government grants, can carry out.

    For example, she pointed to the more than 200 projects that MITEI has provided seed funds of $150,000 each for two years, totaling over $28 million to date. Such early support is “a key part of producing the kind of transformative innovation we know we all need.” In addition, MIT’s The Engine has also helped launch not only Commonwealth Fusion Systems, but also Form Energy, a company building a plant in West Virginia to manufacture advanced iron-air batteries for renewable energy storage, and many others.

    Following that theme of supporting early innovation, the conference featured two panels that served to highlight the work of students and alumni and their energy-related startup companies. First, a startup showcase, moderated by Catarina Madeira, the director of MIT’s Startup Exchange, featured presentations about seven recent spinoff companies that are developing cutting-edge technologies that emerged from MIT research. These included:

    Aeroshield, developing a new kind of highly-insulated window using a unique aerogel material;
    Sublime, which is developing a low-emissions concrete;
    Found Energy, developing a way to use recycled aluminum as a fuel;
    Veir, developing superconducting power lines;
    Emvolom, developing inexpensive green fuels from waste gases;
    Boston Metal, developing low-emissions production processes for steel and other metals;
    Transaera, with a new kind of efficient air conditioning; and
    Carbon Recycling International, producing cheap hydrogen fuel and syngas.
    Later in the conference, a “student slam competition” featured presentations by 11 students who described results of energy projects they had been working on this past summer. The projects were as diverse as analyzing opposition to wind farms in Maine, how best to allocate EV charging stations, optimizing bioenergy production, recycling the lithium from batteries, encouraging adoption of heat pumps, and conflict analysis about energy project siting. Attendees voted on the quality of the student presentations, and electrical engineering and computer science student Tori Hagenlocker was declared first-place winner for her talk on heat pump adoption.

    Students were also featured in a first-time addition to the conference: a panel discussion among five current or recent students, giving their perspective on today’s energy issues and priorities, and how they are working toward trying to make a difference. Andres Alvarez, a recent graduate in nuclear engineering, described his work with a startup focused on identifying and supporting early-stage ideas that have potential. Graduate student Dyanna Jaye of urban studies and planning spoke about her work helping to launch a group called the Sunrise Movement to try to drive climate change as a top priority for the country, and her work helping to develop the Green New Deal.

    Peter Scott, a graduate student in mechanical engineering who is studying green hydrogen production, spoke of the need for a “very drastic and rapid phaseout of current, existing fossil fuels” and a halt on developing new sources. Amar Dayal, an MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, talked about the interplay between technology and policy, and the crucial role that legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act can have in enabling new energy technology to make the climb to commercialization. And Shreyaa Raghavan, a doctoral student in the Institute of Data, Systems, and Society, talked about the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to climate issues, including the important role of computer science. She added that MIT does well on this compared to other institutions, and “sustainability and decarbonization is a pillar in a lot of the different departments and programs that exist here.”

    Some recent recipients of MITEI’s Seed Fund grants reported on their progress in a panel discussion moderated by MITEI Executive Director Martha Broad. Seed grant recipient Ariel Furst, a professor of chemical engineering, pointed out that access to electricity is very much concentrated in the global North and that, overall, one in 10 people worldwide lacks access to electricity and some 2.5 billion people “rely on dirty fuels to heat their homes and cook their food,” with impacts on both health and climate. The solution her project is developing involves using DNA molecules combined with catalysts to passively convert captured carbon dioxide into ethylene, a widely used chemical feedstock and fuel. Kerri Cahoy, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, described her work on a system for monitoring methane emissions and power-line conditions by using satellite-based sensors. She and her team found that power lines often begin emitting detectable broadband radio frequencies long before they actually fail in a way that could spark fires.

    Admir Masic, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, described work on mining the ocean for minerals such as magnesium hydroxide to be used for carbon capture. The process can turn carbon dioxide into solid material that is stable over geological times and potentially usable as a construction material. Kripa Varanasi, a professor of mechanical engineering, said that over the years MITEI seed funding helped some of his projects that “went on to become startup companies, and some of them are thriving.” He described ongoing work on a new kind of electrolyzer for green hydrogen production. He developed a system using bubble-attracting surfaces to increase the efficiency of bioreactors that generate hydrogen fuel.

    A series of panel discussions over the two days covered a range of topics related to technologies and policies that could make a difference in combating climate change. On the technological side, one panel led by Randall Field, the executive director of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center, looked at large, hard-to-decarbonize industrial processes. Antoine Allanore, a professor of metallurgy, described progress in developing innovative processes for producing iron and steel, among the world’s most used commodities, in a way that drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Greg Wilson of JERA Americas described the potential for ammonia produced from renewable sources to substitute for natural gas in power plants, greatly reducing emissions. Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor in materials science and engineering, described ways to decarbonize cement production using a novel low-temperature process. And Guiyan Zang, a research scientist at MITEI, spoke of efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of producing ethylene, a major industrial chemical, by using an electrochemical process.

    Another panel, led by Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering, explored the brightening future for expansion of nuclear power, including new, small, modular reactors that are finally emerging into commercial demonstration. “There is for the first time truly here in the U.S. in at least a decade-and-a-half, a lot of excitement, a lot of attention towards nuclear,” Buongiorno said. Nuclear power currently produces 45 to 50 percent of the nation’s carbon-free electricity, the panelists said, and with the first new nuclear power plant in decades now in operation, the stage is set for significant growth.

    Carbon capture and sequestration was the subject of a panel led by David Babson, the executive director of MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges program. MIT professors Betar Gallant and Kripa Varanasi and industry representatives Elisabeth Birkeland from Equinor and Luc Huyse from Chevron Technology Ventures described significant progress in various approaches to recovering carbon dioxide from power plant emissions, from the air, and from the ocean, and converting it into fuels, construction materials, or other valuable commodities.

    Some panel discussions also addressed the financial and policy side of the climate issue. A panel on geopolitical implications of the energy transition was moderated by MITEI Deputy Director of Policy Christopher Knittel, who said “energy has always been synonymous with geopolitics.” He said that as concerns shift from where to find the oil and gas to where is the cobalt and nickel and other elements that will be needed, “not only are we worried about where the deposits of natural resources are, but we’re going to be more and more worried about how governments are incentivizing the transition” to developing this new mix of natural resources. Panelist Suzanne Berger, an Institute professor, said “we’re now at a moment of unique openness and opportunity for creating a new American production system,” one that is much more efficient and less carbon-producing.

    One panel dealt with the investor’s perspective on the possibilities and pitfalls of emerging energy technologies. Moderator Jacqueline Pless, an assistant professor in MIT Sloan, said “there’s a lot of momentum now in this space. It’s a really ripe time for investing,” but the risks are real. “Tons of investment is needed in some very big and uncertain technologies.”

    The role that large, established companies can play in leading a transition to cleaner energy was addressed by another panel. Moderator J.J. Laukatis, MITEI’s director of member services, said that “the scale of this transformation is massive, and it will also be very different from anything we’ve seen in the past. We’re going to have to scale up complex new technologies and systems across the board, from hydrogen to EVs to the electrical grid, at rates we haven’t done before.” And doing so will require a concerted effort that includes industry as well as government and academia. More

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    Forging climate connections across the Institute

    Climate change is the ultimate cross-cutting issue: Not limited to any one discipline, it ranges across science, technology, policy, culture, human behavior, and well beyond. The response to it likewise requires an all-of-MIT effort.

    Now, to strengthen such an effort, a new grant program spearheaded by the Climate Nucleus, the faculty committee charged with the oversight and implementation of Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade, aims to build up MIT’s climate leadership capacity while also supporting innovative scholarship on diverse climate-related topics and forging new connections across the Institute.

    Called the Fast Forward Faculty Fund (F^4 for short), the program has named its first cohort of six faculty members after issuing its inaugural call for proposals in April 2023. The cohort will come together throughout the year for climate leadership development programming and networking. The program provides financial support for graduate students who will work with the faculty members on the projects — the students will also participate in leadership-building activities — as well as $50,000 in flexible, discretionary funding to be used to support related activities. 

    “Climate change is a crisis that truly touches every single person on the planet,” says Noelle Selin, co-chair of the nucleus and interim director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. “It’s therefore essential that we build capacity for every member of the MIT community to make sense of the problem and help address it. Through the Fast Forward Faculty Fund, our aim is to have a cohort of climate ambassadors who can embed climate everywhere at the Institute.”

    F^4 supports both faculty who would like to begin doing climate-related work, as well as faculty members who are interested in deepening their work on climate. The program has the core goal of developing cohorts of F^4 faculty and graduate students who, in addition to conducting their own research, will become climate leaders at MIT, proactively looking for ways to forge new climate connections across schools, departments, and disciplines.

    One of the projects, “Climate Crisis and Real Estate: Science-based Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies,” led by Professor Siqi Zheng of the MIT Center for Real Estate in collaboration with colleagues from the MIT Sloan School of Management, focuses on the roughly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions that come from the buildings and real estate sector. Zheng notes that this sector has been slow to respond to climate change, but says that is starting to change, thanks in part to the rising awareness of climate risks and new local regulations aimed at reducing emissions from buildings.

    Using a data-driven approach, the project seeks to understand the efficient and equitable market incentives, technology solutions, and public policies that are most effective at transforming the real estate industry. Johnattan Ontiveros, a graduate student in the Technology and Policy Program, is working with Zheng on the project.

    “We were thrilled at the incredible response we received from the MIT faculty to our call for proposals, which speaks volumes about the depth and breadth of interest in climate at MIT,” says Anne White, nucleus co-chair and vice provost and associate vice president for research. “This program makes good on key commitments of the Fast Forward plan, supporting cutting-edge new work by faculty and graduate students while helping to deepen the bench of climate leaders at MIT.”

    During the 2023-24 academic year, the F^4 faculty and graduate student cohorts will come together to discuss their projects, explore opportunities for collaboration, participate in climate leadership development, and think proactively about how to deepen interdisciplinary connections among MIT community members interested in climate change.

    The six inaugural F^4 awardees are:

    Professor Tristan Brown, History Section: Humanistic Approaches to the Climate Crisis  

    With this project, Brown aims to create a new community of practice around narrative-centric approaches to environmental and climate issues. Part of a broader humanities initiative at MIT, it brings together a global working group of interdisciplinary scholars, including Serguei Saavedra (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Or Porath (Tel Aviv University; Religion), collectively focused on examining the historical and present links between sacred places and biodiversity for the purposes of helping governments and nongovernmental organizations formulate better sustainability goals. Boyd Ruamcharoen, a PhD student in the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program, will work with Brown on this project.

    Professor Kerri Cahoy, departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (AeroAstro): Onboard Autonomous AI-driven Satellite Sensor Fusion for Coastal Region Monitoring

    The motivation for this project is the need for much better data collection from satellites, where technology can be “20 years behind,” says Cahoy. As part of this project, Cahoy will pursue research in the area of autonomous artificial intelligence-enabled rapid sensor fusion (which combines data from different sensors, such as radar and cameras) onboard satellites to improve understanding of the impacts of climate change, specifically sea-level rise and hurricanes and flooding in coastal regions. Graduate students Madeline Anderson, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), and Mary Dahl, a PhD student in AeroAstro, will work with Cahoy on this project.

    Professor Priya Donti, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Robust Reinforcement Learning for High-Renewables Power Grids 

    With renewables like wind and solar making up a growing share of electricity generation on power grids, Donti’s project focuses on improving control methods for these distributed sources of electricity. The research will aim to create a realistic representation of the characteristics of power grid operations, and eventually inform scalable operational improvements in power systems. It will “give power systems operators faith that, OK, this conceptually is good, but it also actually works on this grid,” says Donti. PhD candidate Ana Rivera from EECS is the F^4 graduate student on the project.

    Professor Jason Jackson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP): Political Economy of the Climate Crisis: Institutions, Power and Global Governance

    This project takes a political economy approach to the climate crisis, offering a distinct lens to examine, first, the political governance challenge of mobilizing climate action and designing new institutional mechanisms to address the global and intergenerational distributional aspects of climate change; second, the economic challenge of devising new institutional approaches to equitably finance climate action; and third, the cultural challenge — and opportunity — of empowering an adaptive socio-cultural ecology through traditional knowledge and local-level social networks to achieve environmental resilience. Graduate students Chen Chu and Mrinalini Penumaka, both PhD students in DUSP, are working with Jackson on the project.

    Professor Haruko Wainwright, departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and Civil and Environmental Engineering: Low-cost Environmental Monitoring Network Technologies in Rural Communities for Addressing Climate Justice 

    This project will establish a community-based climate and environmental monitoring network in addition to a data visualization and analysis infrastructure in rural marginalized communities to better understand and address climate justice issues. The project team plans to work with rural communities in Alaska to install low-cost air and water quality, weather, and soil sensors. Graduate students Kay Whiteaker, an MS candidate in NSE, and Amandeep Singh, and MS candidate in System Design and Management at Sloan, are working with Wainwright on the project, as is David McGee, professor in earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences.

    Professor Siqi Zheng, MIT Center for Real Estate and DUSP: Climate Crisis and Real Estate: Science-based Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies 

    See the text above for the details on this project. More

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    Smart irrigation technology covers “more crop per drop”

    In agriculture today, robots and drones can monitor fields, temperature and moisture sensors can be automated to meet crop needs, and a host of other systems and devices make farms more efficient, resource-conscious, and profitable. The use of precision agriculture, as these technologies are collectively known, offers significant advantages. However, because the technology can be costly, it remains out of reach for the majority of the world’s farmers.

    “Many of the poor around the world are small, subsistence farmers,” says Susan Amrose, research scientist with the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Lab at MIT. “With intensification of food production needs, worsening soil, water scarcity, and smaller plots, these farmers can’t continue with their current practices.”

    By some estimates, the global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by as much as 40 percent by the end of the decade. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s 570 million farms are classed as smallholder farms, with many located in under-resourced and water-stressed regions. With rapid population growth and climate change driving up demand for food, and with more strain on natural resources, increasing the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices among smallholder farmers is vital. 

    Amrose, who helps lead desalination, drip irrigation, water, and sanitation projects for GEAR Lab, says these small farmers need to move to more mechanized practices. “We’re trying to make it much, much more affordable for farmers to utilize solar-powered irrigation, and to have access to tools that, right now, they’re priced out of,” she says. “More crop per drop, more crop per area, that’s our goal.”

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    No Drop to Spare: MIT creates affordable, user-driven smart irrigation technology | MIT Mechanical Engineering

    Drip irrigation systems release water and nutrients in controlled volumes directly to the root zone of the crop through a network of pipes and emitters. These systems can reduce water consumption by 20 to 60 percent when compared to conventional flood irrigation methods.

    “Agriculture uses 70 percent of the fresh water that’s in use across the globe. Large-scale adoption and correct management of drip irrigation could help to reduce consumption of fresh water, which is especially critical for regions experiencing water shortages or groundwater depletion,” says Carolyn Sheline SM ’19, a PhD student and member of the GEAR Lab’s Drip Irrigation team. “A lot of irrigation technology is developed for larger farms that can put more money into it — but inexpensive doesn’t need to mean ‘not technologically advanced.’”

    GEAR Lab has created several drip irrigation technology solutions to date, including a low-pressure drip emitter that has been shown to reduce pumping energy by more than 50 percent when compared to existing emitters; a systems-level optimization model that analyzes factors like local weather conditions and crop layouts, to cut overall system operation costs by up to 30 percent; and a low-cost precision irrigation controller that optimizes system energy and water use, enabling farmers to operate the system on an ideal schedule given their specific resources, needs, and preferences. The controller has recently been shown to reduce water consumption by over 40 percent when compared to traditional practices.

    To build these new, affordable technologies, the team tapped into a critical knowledge source — the farmers themselves.

    “We didn’t just create technology in isolation — we also advanced our understanding of how people would interact with and value this technology, and we did that before the technology had come to fruition,” says Amos Winter SM ’05, PhD ’11, associate professor of mechanical engineering and MIT GEAR Lab principal investigator. “Getting affirmations that farmers would value what the technology would do before we finished it was incredibly important.”

    The team held “Farmer Field Days” and conducted interviews with more than 200 farmers, suppliers, and industry professionals in Kenya, Morocco, and Jordan, the regions selected to host field pilot test sites. These specific sites were selected for a variety of reasons, including solar availability and water scarcity, and because all were great candidate markets for eventual adoption of the technology.

    “People usually understand their own problems really well, and they’re very good at coming up with solutions to them,” says Fiona Grant ’17, SM ’19, also a PhD candidate with the GEAR Lab Drip Irrigation team. “As designers, our role really is to provide a different set of expertise and another avenue for them to get the tools or the resources that they need.”

    The controller, for example, takes in weather information, like relative humidity, temperature, wind speed values, and precipitation. Then, using artificial intelligence, it calculates and predicts the area’s solar exposure for the day and the exact irrigation needs for the farmer, and sends information to their smartphone. How much, or how little, automation an individual site uses remains up to the farmer. In its first season of operation on a Moroccan test site, GEAR Lab technology reduced water consumption by 44 percent and energy by 38 percent when compared to a neighboring farm using traditional drip irrigation practice.

    “The way you’re going to operate a system is going to have a big impact on the way you design it,” says Grant. “We gained a sense of what farmers would be willing to change, or not, regarding interactions with the system. We found that what we might change, and what would be acceptable to change, were not necessarily the same thing.”

    GEAR Lab alumna Georgia Van de Zande ’15, SM ’18, PhD ’23, concurs. “It’s about more than just delivering a lower-cost system, it’s also about creating something they’re going to want to use and want to trust.”

    In Jordan, researchers at a full-scale test farm are operating a solar-powered drip system with a prototype of the controller and are receiving smartphone commands on when to open and close the manual valves. In Morocco, the controller is operating at a research farm with a fully automated hydraulic system; researchers are monitoring the irrigation and conducting additional agronomic tasks. In Kenya, where precision agriculture and smart irrigation haven’t yet seen very much adoption, a simpler version of the controller serves to provide educational and training information in addition to offering scheduling and control capabilities.

    Knowledge is power for the farmers, and for designers and engineers, too. If an engineer can know a user’s requirements, Winter says, they’re much more likely to create a successful solution.

    “The most powerful tool a designer can have is perspective. I have one perspective — the math and science and tech innovation side — but I don’t know a thing about what it’s like to live every day as a farmer in Jordan or Morocco,” says Winter. “I don’t know what clogs the filters, or who shuts off the water. If you can see the world through the eyes of stakeholders, you’re going to spot requirements and constraints that you wouldn’t have picked up on otherwise.”

    Winter says the technology his team is building is exciting for a lot of reasons.

    “To be in a situation where the world is saying, ‘we need to deal with water stress, we need to deal with climate adaptation, and we need to particularly do this in resource-constrained countries,’ and to be in a position where we can do something about it and produce something of tremendous value and efficacy is incredible,” says Winter. “Solving the right problem at the right time, on a massive scale, is thrilling.” More

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    Printing a new approach to fusion power plant materials

    When Alexander O’Brien sent in his application for graduate school at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, he had a germ of a research idea already brewing. So when he received a phone call from Professor Mingda Li, he shared it: The student from Arkansas wanted to explore the design of materials that could hold nuclear reactors together.

    Li listened to him patiently and then said, “I think you’d be a really good fit for Professor Ju Li,” O’Brien remembers. Ju Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Engineering, had wanted to explore 3D printing for nuclear reactors and O’Brien seemed like the right candidate. “At that moment I decided to go to MIT if they accepted me,” O’Brien remembers.

    And they did.

    Under the advisement of Ju Li, the fourth-year doctoral student now explores 3D printing of ceramic-metal composites, materials that can be used to construct fusion power plants.

    An early interest in the sciences

    Growing up in Springdale, Arkansas as a self-described “band nerd,” O’Brien was particularly interested in chemistry and physics. It was one thing to mix baking soda and vinegar to make a “volcano” and quite another to understand why that was happening. “I just enjoyed understanding things on a deeper level and being able to figure out how the world works,” he says.

    At the same time, it was difficult to ignore the economics of energy playing out in his own backyard. When Arkansas, a place that had hardly ever seen earthquakes, started registering them in the wake of fracking in neighboring Oklahoma, it was “like a lightbulb moment” for O’Brien. “I knew this was going to create problems down the line, I knew there’s got to be a better way to do [energy],” he says.

    With the idea of energy alternatives simmering on the back burner, O’Brien enrolled for undergraduate studies at the University of Arkansas. He participated in the school’s marching band — “you show up a week before everyone else and there’s 400 people who automatically become your friends” — and enjoyed the social environment that a large state school could offer.

    O’Brien double-majored in chemical engineering and physics and appreciated “the ability to get your hands dirty on machinery to make things work.” Deciding to begin exploring his interest in energy alternatives, O’Brien researched transition metal dichalcogenides, coatings of which could catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction and more easily create hydrogen gas, a green energy alternative.

    It was shortly after his sophomore year, however, that O’Brien really found his way in the field of energy alternatives — in nuclear engineering. The American Chemical Society was soliciting student applications for summer study of nuclear chemistry in San Jose, California. O’Brien applied and got accepted. “After years of knowing I wanted to work in green energy but not knowing what that looked like, I very quickly fell in love with [nuclear engineering],” he says. That summer also cemented O’Brien’s decision to attend graduate school. “I came away with this idea of ‘I need to go to grad school because I need to know more about this,’” he says.

    O’Brien especially appreciated an independent project, assigned as part of the summer program: He chose to research nuclear-powered spacecraft. In digging deeper, O’Brien discovered the challenges of powering spacecraft — nuclear was the most viable alternative, but it had to work around extraneous radiation sources in space. Getting to explore national laboratories near San Jose sealed the deal. “I got to visit the National Ignition Facility, which is the big fusion center up there, and just seeing that massive facility entirely designed around this one idea of fusion was kind of mind-blowing to me,” O’Brien says.

    A fresh blueprint for fusion power plants

    O’Brien’s current research at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) is equally mind-blowing.

    As the design of new fusion devices kicks into gear, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the materials we have been using just don’t hold up to the higher temperatures and radiation levels in operating environments, O’Brien says. Additive manufacturing, another term for 3D printing, “opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for what you can do with metals, which is exactly what you’re going to need [to build the next generation of fusion power plants],” he says.

    Metals and ceramics by themselves might not do the job of withstanding high temperatures (750 degrees Celsius is the target) and stresses and radiation, but together they might get there. Although such metal matrix composites have been around for decades, they have been impractical for use in reactors because they’re “difficult to make with any kind of uniformity and really limited in size scale,” O’Brien says. That’s because when you try to place ceramic nanoparticles into a pool of molten metal, they’re going to fall out in whichever direction they want. “3D printing quickly changes that story entirely, to the point where if you want to add these nanoparticles in very specific regions, you have the capability to do that,” O’Brien says.

    O’Brien’s work, which forms the basis of his doctoral thesis and a research paper in the journal Additive Manufacturing, involves implanting metals with ceramic nanoparticles. The net result is a metal matrix composite that is an ideal candidate for fusion devices, especially for the vacuum vessel component, which must be able to withstand high temperatures, extremely corrosive molten salts, and internal helium gas from nuclear transmutation.

    O’Brien’s work focuses on nickel superalloys like Inconel 718, which are especially robust candidates because they can withstand higher operating temperatures while retaining strength. Helium embrittlement, where bubbles of helium caused by fusion neutrons lead to weakness and failure, is a problem with Inconel 718, but composites exhibit potential to overcome this challenge.

    To create the composites, first a mechanical milling process coats the ceramic onto the metal particles. The ceramic nanoparticles act as reinforcing strength agents, especially at high temperatures, and make materials last longer. The nanoparticles also absorb helium and radiation defects when uniformly dispersed, which prevent these damage agents from all getting to the grain boundaries.

    The composite then goes through a 3D printing process called powder bed fusion (non-nuclear fusion), where a laser passes over a bed of this powder melting it into desired shapes. “By coating these particles with the ceramic and then only melting very specific regions, we keep the ceramics in the areas that we want, and then you can build up and have a uniform structure,” O’Brien says.

    Printing an exciting future

    The 3D printing of nuclear materials exhibits such promise that O’Brien is looking at pursuing the prospect after his doctoral studies. “The concept of these metal matrix composites and how they can enhance material property is really interesting,” he says. Scaling it up commercially through a startup company is on his radar.

    For now, O’Brien is enjoying research and catching an occasional Broadway show with his wife. While the band nerd doesn’t pick up his saxophone much anymore, he does enjoy driving up to New Hampshire and going backpacking. “That’s my newfound hobby,” O’Brien says, “since I started grad school.” More